Why you don’t have to drink 8 glasses of water to be healthy
We’ve all heard the “drinking 8 glasses of water daily will make you healthier” saying, but where did this recommendation come from, and how accurate is it?
It is a known fact that replacing fizzy drinks with water improves your energy and wellness, but it turns out that a healthy balance of vitamins and other nutrients is needed to achieve its full effect.
Effects of water on overall health
Water is one of the biggest contributors to mental energy levels, which plays a huge role in our overall health. The benefits of having high mental energy levels include happiness, confidence, focus, increased willpower, motivation, and productivity. Consequently, the mind has a huge effect on one’s physical energy. Increased willpower and motivation often lead to healthier eating habits, and less procrastination, among many others.
Overhydration explained
Like the age-old saying goes “too much of a good thing is bad” and this also goes for water.
Drinking too much water can also be dangerous, overhydration can lead to water intoxication. Anyone who drinks too much water affects the sodium levels in their body which in turn causes a condition called hyponatremia.
The benefits of drinking adequate amounts of water
All the major systems of your body depend on water to work properly. Drinking adequate amounts of water helps your body:
• Regulate temperature
• Prevent constipation
• Flush out waste products
• Perform all major bodily functions
Water also contains zero sugars and calories and if you want to rid and detox your body of excess alcohol, then drink some water, that’s the best hangover remedy we can give you.
It’s great for dieting, not only will it remove unwanted calories and sugar from the usual sweet drink on the side, but it also suppresses your appetite.
Last and most importantly, it is the best way to keep hydrated, get rid of headaches and cleanse your body of toxins.
Overhydration can be deadly.
Water will only be effective when used as part of a balanced diet. If not, the consequences can be dangerous, and some of them are even deadly. How exactly?
Overhydration is an imbalance of fluids and vitamins in your diet. It happens when your body takes in or holds on to more fluid than your kidneys can remove.
Healthy people, athletes and people on radical diets are at a higher risk for overhydration.
Although quite rare, water intoxication is a real thing, and can lead to death. It occurs through overhydrating yourself by ONLY drinking water in excessive amounts, say in a contest or in long bouts of exercise with a very high amount of water being consumed.
While both are very difficult and reaching a state of overhydration is quite rare, to say the least, it is still possible. A healthy liver should be able to process 0.8 – 1 litre of water per hour, so you would be hard-pressed to exceed the said limit.
Checking if you’re adequately hydrated
Drinking too much water or not having a way to remove it can cause water levels to build up. This dilutes important substances in your blood. Endurance athletes, such as those who run marathons and triathlons, sometimes drink too much water before and during an event.
The colour of urine is a good indicator of your hydration status. Pale yellow urine that looks like lemonade is a good goal. Darker urine means you need more water. Colourless urine means you are overhydrated.
At the end of the day, water is one of the most important things you can put into your body, and we love it! But you need to make sure you use it in regulation in a healthy diet.
How do you make sure you don’t collapse from overhydration? Mix some McNab’s SuperCharge fizz in your next bottle of Valpre. It’s a convenient single effervescent tablet that contains all the vitamins and minerals you need to SuperCharge your day with a natural energy boost. And besides that, it tastes great too!